In Celebration of Wax Men

“Some of Waxman’s achievements were to keep bad things from happening. For virtually the entire 1980s, Waxman blocked Dingell and the Reagan administration from weakening auto emission standards. At one point, he blocked a key vote on a bill to debilitate the Clean Air Act by introducing 600 amendments, which he had wheeled into the room in shopping carts. Waxman also led the war on secondhand cigarette smoke. He publicized an obscure EPA report that established secondhand smoke as a carcinogen, uncovered the onetime Philip Morris lab director who had determined that nicotine was addictive, and publicly grilled tobacco company CEOs about their failure to share that fact with the public.” —redandbluerays

If he is such a great energy leader then why are we so far behind the world on reducing CO2 emissions and obamaciously painting “our” continued reliance on fossil fuels green (electric cars and buses take their coal right off of mountain tops).

“Five countries are responsible for over half of fossil-fuel-related CO2 emissions, and the United States and China alone account for more than a third. The United States has been the world’s largest emitter for over a century, releasing 1.66 GtC in 2006, or 19.8 percent of global emissions. It is now closely followed by China, where growth in emissions has been driven by a rapid increase in coal consumption—China is currently opening an average of two coal-fired power plants a week. Emissions in China have more than doubled since 1990, reaching 1.48 GtC in 2006, or 17.7 percent of the world total. Analysts expect that China will overtake the United States to become the world’s largest emitter before 2009.”–Earth Policy org

Posted: Tue, 25 Nov 2008 20:17:25 GMT

State regulators have approved a permit change that will allow Massey Energy to start a mountaintop removal mine on a southern West Virginia site that environmentalists are trying to preserve for a wind farm.